Chichester. By a Layman." In a sermon delivered at the consecration of the Bishop of London, Dr. G. replied to some parts of this work, though, according to the most approved system of controversial tactics, without giving his hearers, or readers, any direction where to find the heretical propositions which he undertook to refute. As he had administered the antidote, why send them to batten on the poison? This sermon called forth a "Second Letter" from the Layman. In both these productions, the claim of every man to Christian privileges who believes in the Messiahship of Jesus; the inefficiency of creeds to secure uniformity of opinion; the innocency of heresy unless that term be connected with party spirit, and not merely descriptive of erroneous opinions; alliance between church and state; the character of the clergy; and other topics discussed or alluded to in this Lecture, are touched with the hand of a master.

NOTE (')-Page 118.

Orthodoxy, as well as heresy, has its foreign alliances; witness Bishop Horsley's pedigree of unchristian Trinitarianism, in a charge to his clergy. "The inquiry becomes more important when it is discovered that these were notions by no means peculiar to the Platonic school; that the Platonists pretended to be no more than the expositors of a more ancient doctrine, which is traced from Plato to Parmenides; from Parmenides to his masters of the Pythagorean sect; from the Pythagoreans to Orpheus, the earliest of the Grecian mysta

gogues; from Orpheus to the secret lore of the Egyptian priests, in which the foundations of the Orphic theology were laid. Similar notions of a triple principle prevailed in the Persian and Chaldean theology; and vestiges even of a Trinity were discernible in the Roman superstition in a very late age. This worship the Romans had received from their Trojan ancestors; for the Trojans brought it with them into Italy from Phrygia. In Phrygia it was introduced by Dardanus, so early as in the ninth century after Noah's flood. Dardanus carried it with him from Samothrace; where the personages that were the objects of it were worshipped under the Hebrew name of the Cabirim. Who these Cabirim might be, has been a matter of unsuccessful inquiry to many learned men. The utmost that is known with certainty is, that they were originally three, and were called, by way of eminence, the great or mighty ones; for that is the import of the Hebrew name. And of the like import is their Latin appellation, Penates. Thus, the joint worship of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the triad of the Roman capitol, is traced to that of the three mighty ones in Samothrace; which was established in that island, at what precise time it is impossible to determine, but earlier, if Eusebius may be credited, than the days of Abraham.

In a critique on these Lectures in the Eclectic Review, the following remark is made on the passage (pp. 113— 118) to which the above note refers: "If Unitarians are pleased to think of themselves as forming a sect of Deists, and to call themselves Christian Unitarians,' we may venture to say, that their opponents will be as

well content with the arrangement. Thus classed and separated, then, let us stand: on the one side, the

sages of Greece and Rome, who by wisdom knew not God,' and the Jews, who do always resist the Holy Ghost,' and the followers of the false Prophet,' and Deists, and Chinese, and Hindoos, and Christian Unitarians ; and, on the other side, all those who call on the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."-That Deist means properly a believer in God, and only accidentally a disbeliever in Christianity, and that it is solely in the former sense that Unitarians (and Trinitarians also) are a sect of Deists; that the Gentiles referred to were those who did "by nature the things contained in the law," thus uniting the approbation of the New Testament and the reprobation of the Eclectic Review; that it is not, nor ever has been, by maintaining the unity of God that the Jews "resist the Holy Ghost;" and that when that doctrine was asserted by " the false Prophet," it could no more cease to be an important truth, than Jesus could become an impostor in consequence of a demoniac's proclaiming him the Messiah; these are facts so obvious, that it would be unnecessary to point out the foregoing evasion of them, but to illustrate the mode in which an Evangelical Reviewer criticises an Unitarian publication. When he characterizes his own party as "those who call on the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," his description is both correct and unscriptural: it marks their worship as neither known nor practised by Christ and his apostles. Had he read the note to which these remarks are appended, he would have seen that I was warranted by one of his brethren in not considering

Trinitarians, any more than Unitarians, as standing alone, or having no associates out of the Christian pale. Horsley, and others, (see Yates's Sermon on the Peculiarities of the Gospel,) have fraternized, not indeed with those whose comparatively pure and sublime speculations seem a glimmering of the light of heaven, but with the adorers of Brahma, Veeshnu, and Seeva; of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; and with those who "held the existence of three Parcæ or Fates, of the three-shaped monster Chimæra, and of the dog Cerberus, which had three heads upon one body." The list of affinities thus completed, I no more quarrel with it than the Reviewer. Let him and his party

"Claim kindred there, and have their claims allowed."

NOTE (")-Page 121.

An exception should have been made of the brief but interesting account of some of the principal sufferers for the Unitarian cause, in Mr. Belsham's Sermon on the Repeal of the Penal Laws against Antitrinitarians. "The history of virtuous, upright minds," says Mr. Lindsey, in his Historical View of the Unitarian Doctrine, "and inquirers after truth, emerging out of the long night of antichristian darkness, seeking the great Source of being and benevolent Father of all; and having found HIM, yielding themselves to tortures and death, rather than disown HIM,-presents the most instructing, awful, and animating spectacle and lesson, of all others." Mr. L.'s work but very partially accomplished this object. We

stand in great need of an history of Unitarianism. Such a work might be thrown into a series of biographical portraits, connecting the most important events of each age or country with some leading character; commencing with those who, in the second, third, and fourth centuries, withstood the tide of corruption then flowing in upon the Church; including the Polish and other continental reformers, and the advocates for truth and liberty in the Establishment of our own country; detailing, where authentic information exists, the different processes by which the faith of eminent individuals was changed or formed; exhibiting at large the progress of Unitarianism among the poor, especially in the conversion of whole societies, as Rossendale, &c.; and concluding with a complete view of its present state, as to numbers, institutions, legal situation, public opinion, &c. This plan would not only embrace much to command the attention of the theological inquirer, but would satisfactorily repel many objections to Unitarianism; and by furnishing the youthful part of our societies with information and examples of the most attractive description, would excite attachment to the religion of their fathers, veneration for its confessors and advocates, interest in its cause, and knowledge, from facts, of the best means for promoting its diffusion. We have men well qualified for such a task. I commend it to their attention.

NOTE (")-Page 169.

The horrors of war are but slightly adverted to, either in the Lecture or the Appendix, for the obvious reason